Family Description: Monoecious or dioecious; resiniferous trees or shrubs with opposite or whorled, usually scale-like, leaves. Male and female cones made up of opposite or whorled scales. Scales of male cones (microsporophylls) bearing 3-5 pollen-sacs on the lower surface. Scales of female cones (megasporophylls) bearing 2 to many erect ovules on the upper surface, and completely adnate to the subtending bract. Fruit a more or less woody cone, or the scales becoming fleshy and the fruit berry-like, indehiscent. Seeds winged or not.

Family Description: Shrubs with opposite or verticillate leaves, usually reduced to short, more or less coalescent sheaths, 1-2(-3) mm; not resiniferous. Inflorescences axillary; strobili sessile or on short shoots. Fruit a globose or ovoid syncarp, the bracts fleshy at maturity, red, or rarely yellow.